Build with BBB
Build with BBB
From Side Gig to Success: Clark Van Dyck's Journey in HVAC and Beyond
Ever wondered how a side gig can transform into a thriving business? Join us as we sit down with Clark Van Dyck, the founder of Van Dyck Mechanical, who took his part-time HVAC work to full-time success. Clark shares his story to overcoming the initial fear of not receiving service calls, and how he turned those challenges into a rapidly growing small business. His journey shares insights for budding entrepreneurs, especially on staying focused and committed to one's goals.
Clark highlights the significance of creating a flexible work environment to boost customer satisfaction. By accommodating employees' family needs and maintaining a work-life balance, Van Dyke Mechanical ensures that their customers receive top-notch service. We discuss the importance of keeping promises, sticking to scheduled appointments, and the powerful role of reputation and word-of-mouth in smaller communities like Chickasha, Oklahoma. Clark also opens up about tackling the challenges posed by unscrupulous players in the HVAC industry and the growing influence of Google reviews on customer trust.
In our conversation, Clark delves into the principles of establishing trust through honesty and a strong company culture. He explains why prioritizing repairs over replacements when financially sensible builds long-term client relationships. We also talk about the importance of hiring for soft skills and cultural fit, along with offering in-house training and creating clear career paths for employees. Wrapping up, Clark discusses their expansion into septic services to meet rural community needs, reaffirming Van Dyke Mechanical’s dedication to comprehensive customer satisfaction.
To learn more about Van Dyck Mechanical LLC, visit their website: https://vandyckmechanical.com/residential-hvac/
https://www.bbb.org/us/ok/oklahoma-city/profile/heating-and-air-conditioning/van-dyck-mechanical-llc-0995-90054006
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And when I say customer service, there's no magic, there's no curtain, there's no big production. It's literally simply trying to do what you say you're going to do when you say you're going to do it.
Speaker 2:Hey there everyone. Welcome back to the Build With BBB podcast. I'm your host, casey Farmer, here with Clark Van Dyke of Van Dyke Mechanical, a longtime accredited business and community member. We're so excited we're going to be talking about their customer-centric business model, what it looks like to be really involved in the community and how to put your customers first. Clark, welcome to the podcast. Thank you, glad to be here. Yeah, so one of my favorite things always to start off with is how did you get the wild idea to start an HVAC company?
Speaker 1:Well, like I was telling you before we got started here, I started out of high school in public safety careers and heating and air conditioning was a part-time, day-off thing and it kind of just became the full-time thing. And through working through other companies, there was just something more that I wanted and I saw through conversations with people that there was a need for true customer service in the residential and light commercial you know, heat and air industry and plumbing industry. There's really a big hole there and the right things happened and we decided to make a go for it in 2016. And here we are.
Speaker 2:Here we are. I learned a little bit beforehand about your story. This is not all you do. You're a very busy guy and an entrepreneur, so would you say kind of always been an entrepreneur at heart. Oh, yes, yes, always busy doing something.
Speaker 1:Always in a challenge, Always trying to do everything you know everything the best we can, or improve even what we're doing constantly.
Speaker 2:Sure, sure. So I was checking out your website, getting to know Van Dyke, though you've been accredited, I think, since 2017. So I'm very active in our community yeah, several years. So congratulations One. Making it through COVID is tough. It was tough for a lot of businesses. So I mean that shows a lot about getting through that, but a big part of what you do is customer-centric.
Speaker 1:Do you want to talk about that? So, like we kind of touched on, you know, when Van Dyke Mechanical came to exist, I was working here in Oklahoma City for a company that did primarily commercial and industrial work. They allowed some side work so I did a little bit, but it was the volume of hey, when you get home from work, will you come over to my house and work? Well, you know, can you do this for this person? And you know they, you know my number started spreading and what I was hearing was just like you know, people have gotten to where they depend on their you know their heat or their air conditioning or their plumbing system. And when you call a company and they say, okay, we'll put you on the list, that doesn't sit very well. Sure, so that's, that's one of the customer service holes that I identified. And the other thing was just just trying to show up and do what you say you're going to do. When you say you're going to do, it is big, I mean it's huge.
Speaker 1:So we went on a little while with doing some stuff on the side and then, like I said, life events happened and it presented an opportunity. So we started this business, me in a truck by myself. The first day was July 5th 2016. And then we just grew incrementally as the demand justified. We hired an apprentice and then we hired a journeyman, bought another truck and then we hired another apprentice and then we hired another journeyman. And you fast forward to um today and, you know, at our, at our, at our maximum, you know, uh, maximum number of employees, I think we had 28 full-time employees and um 12 trucks. We're we're down a little bit now, just based upon, you know, demand.
Speaker 1:But, um, and and we've also looked at some stuff as far as efficiencies and different directions the business is going. But, yeah, it grew really fast and I attribute that fast growth and it was really uncomfortable. You know, for the majority of that time too, it wanted to grow faster than I necessarily wanted it to grow. But it's all based on customer service. And when I say customer service, there's no magic, there's no curtain, there's no, you know there's no, there's no curtain, there's no big production, it's just, it's. It's literally simply trying to do what you say you're going to do. When you say you're going to do it Interesting and stand behind what you do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and when you started with a little, with a truck, in 2016, did you imagine that your company was going to look like what it looks like today?
Speaker 1:Oh no, no. I went through the terror of oh my, we didn't even get a single service call today. What are we going to do? I hope we get something tomorrow and I feel like you spend a certain number of days terrified that you know it's just going to, it's just not going to work. And you know, one day you wake up and you go, wow, how did it become this monster?
Speaker 2:What advice would you give to an entrepreneur who might be in that situation that you were in? Hey, I'm not getting a phone call today. It's kind of freaky. What would you tell even yourself?
Speaker 1:or another entrepreneur, a lot of, a lot of older, a lot of older guys that have been in business for a long time. You know, I was fortunate enough to be. You know that I was fortunate enough to know and be able to talk to um were just, they give the advice keep your nose down. You know, focus on what you're doing, don't worry about what your competitors are doing, don't worry about what other people are saying. You know, stay the course of what you know that you need to be doing and what your mission is, and everything will work out. And you know, the one thing that we really tried to focus on was if we take care of people. You know, I never, from the start of this, have really went out chasing a dollar. You know we're not chasing the next sale, we're taking care of people and the dollars follow naturally with taking care of people.
Speaker 2:So mentorship is a big part of that. Oh yeah, in your business, yeah.
Speaker 1:And a little bit of it's just mindset too Sure. When we first started, I had a handful of people that said, you know, because we started in Chickasha and there was two really established decades-old hair companies in Chickasha and I had a handful of people say you're never going to make it, you're never going to make it, you're making a big mistake. There's no way you can go in against these big two and make a splash at all. I mean, you're being silly, you need to go get a job. Well, part of what exists in me is a little bit of oh yeah. Well, let me show you what we can do. So a little bit, I think it requires risk tolerance. It requires a little bit of obstinance. Yeah, and ultimately I'm one that I've got a plan B and a plan C for everything that we do. Um, it drives people around me crazy sometimes, but every time we embark in a new venture like we just started a. We just started a septic division. You know that's been publicly open for two, three weeks now.
Speaker 2:Oh, new, new, Okay, new new, yeah New new.
Speaker 1:So but one of the things that that is is I go into everything we do planning for failure.
Speaker 2:OK.
Speaker 1:And that way you know if it looks like it's going that way, then you already know your way out. I think you know, as as romantic as it may sound to just go take the chance and just go for it.
Speaker 2:You got it. You got to plan for what you're going to do when it fails. Yeah, you mentioned earlier that Van Dyke does not adhere to kind of typical working hours because it's not always best for what the customer needs.
Speaker 1:Do you want to talk about that? Yeah, that's correct. And if I can sidebar from that a little bit as far as not typical working hours and we've talked a little bit about people taking care of people is kind of where we started, where we want to continue to go, that's on the employee side as well as the customer side. So my time, since I've been doing full-time heating and air conditioning and plumbing work, I've worked for companies, worked for several different companies before we started this. Every one of those companies I took something from, be it.
Speaker 1:Things I really disliked about working for that company, things I really liked management styles. What was a strong, positive management style that existed at this place? What was a management style that ruined morale and made me not want to get up and come to work at the other place? So when we started, I kind of just combined those things and We've got the goal of all of our employees looking forward to getting up in the morning, coming to work, trying to maintain a family-type environment for the employee. We realize that everybody works so they can live their life. They don't live to work. Well, we've got stuff we've got to do. I mean, it has to be within reason. Sure, but we understand family comes first, I do I mean it?
Speaker 1:has to be within reason, you know. But. But we understand family comes first and we try to be as flexible as we can, which which is actually kind of a benefit in the customer service world too, because if we have employees that are happy, that enjoy what they're doing, it makes the customer experience that much better, cause if you're dealing with a pleasant guy that likes his job and, you know, sees a purpose behind what he's doing, your experience as a customer is going to be a lot better than if you've got somebody that's just trying to make the next paycheck. Yeah, the other thing is is through some of that flexibility we foster an environment, or at least try to, and I mentioned it's a family environment, albeit like a lot of families. It's dysfunctional at times, but for the most part it's good. Sure, but some of that flexibility results in flexibility. That's both ways. So if, say, an employee needs to take off today because he's got a kid function or something like that, but we have stuff pop up on a Saturday or that needs to be done late in an evening or something, most of our guys are more than happy to adjust their schedule, make up those hours, and it allows us to take care of customers and take care of the employee, so that works.
Speaker 1:But outside of that, even if we're not being flexible or swapping time or something to that effect, we do have people on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and we understand that. The customer's time and back to doing what you say you're going to do, when you're going to, when you say you're going to do it. Everybody's time's valuable. I think time. Time is probably the most expensive commodity that any of us have because you're not getting back. So if we say we're going to be at your house between three and five, we're going to be there between three and five. If you can't make an appointment during regular business hours, we're more than happy to schedule and make it work Weekends or at night. As long as we know and we have a little bit of notice, we can make about anything work. But the on-call situation is we always have somebody available.
Speaker 2:You talked about that customer experience and how that's so important to your business and unfortunately we see a lot albeit like a lot of bad actors in the HVAC industry. Here at B2B we see a lot of that and part of that is lack of quality of service, but it's also quality of like install and how they're recommending products and services. What does that look like for Van Dyke?
Speaker 1:Well, we, you know, starting in Chickasha, it's a, you know, the the uh smaller community, and I think Chickasha is growing, it's growing.
Speaker 2:It is.
Speaker 1:Um, it's bigger now and it's there's people from the outside that you know aren't necessarily from the area now, so it's changing a little bit. But in a community like Chegishay, word of mouth and reputation literally mean everything. So you know one. The way we look at it is is you know, an unhappy customer is a lot more experience or a lot more expensive, excuse me, than going the extra mile and making sure everything's done right. Sure, we can't be the cheapest. We don't try to be the cheapest. If it comes down to, who can get this system installed in my house for the least number of dollars?
Speaker 2:And sometimes people need that, but often you get what you pay for. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And often if we get in that situation, you know, if we look at value provided, I think we'll win every time. If we look at just number of dollars and how cheap, can we do it? I'm not very good at competing in that arena. It's not a drastic difference, but you know we're not. That's not where we want to compete. It's not a drastic difference, but you know we're not. That's not where we want to compete. I want to go home and basically I judge everything by how I feel when I go home at the end of the day. If I can go home at the end of the day and feel like I've delivered a product and a service to you at your home that I'd be happy to have in my home or my grandmother's house or you know anybody that's close to me, then we've succeeded. If there's anything that we're like I would have done that different if it was in my house then we didn't really do our job that well that day. Yeah, so we try to avoid those situations and unfortunately, like you're saying, a lot of bad actors we we're in. We're going behind other companies a lot more than I wish we would have. Sure, and it really it's becoming challenging because probably one out of every three to five customers we talk to have talked to somebody else, be it other companies or friends or people at church, and they're already you know, they're already primed up, you know, for the high pressure sales tactics and trying to get. You know people are trying to sell people things that they don't truly need.
Speaker 1:I'm in that age group where it's you know the Internet was just starting to be a thing and you know I'm pre-Google, I'm pre-Google and the Google review phenomenon at first I was really kind of like man. I can't believe people are taking these reviews more seriously. Because you go to seminars and you really watch customer behavior. People trust a Google review a lot more than they trust somebody at church or their neighbor or even their relatives. They trust somebody at church or their neighbor or even their relatives, and the more and more I see like you mentioned I mean you have a bad experience with somebody close. You know that somebody close to you referred. You know Google reviews are a good thing. They're a good thing, but you have to read.
Speaker 1:If you're someone that's looking at Google reviews, you have to read through the reviews and make your own opinion of whether or not those reviews are legitimate or not, because there's some very large companies in our industry that somehow, despite Google's best efforts, there's fake reviews getting bought and reviews being transferred. And if you go through and read them, you can start seeing a generic pattern.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, start seeing a generic pattern. Yeah, yeah, I think you you kind of touched on it about high pressure sales tactics, which is also a big part of bad actors in the HVAC community.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is, Um. One thing we do to combat that is is none of our techs, none of our employees are paid on commission whatsoever. We do not have a commission structure. We're one of the few companies I know of left that pay a technician from the time they get to work in the morning to the time they go home at night. We pay straight, hourly. There is some things that if they hit certain metrics, if they hit certain metrics, if they, you know, achieve certain things, there's some spiffs and there's some bonuses and so forth, but they don't have mediocre pay with commission bonuses, um, that incentivize sales. And, honestly, one of my frustrations with employees is we've got we've got some products out there that are really cool that, you know, provide real benefit to a homeowner. I've got some products out there that are really cool, that provide real benefit to a homeowner. I've got some service techs that just do not like to sell and I wish they'd provide this list of accessories and so forth to homeowners more often, Not only because, yes, sales make the world go round.
Speaker 2:That's not what we're 100% about but sales do make the world go round, but it's also about indoor air quality and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1:I hate it when customers are like, oh, you guys offer that. Well, the last several times your guy was here he didn't mention it. Well, yeah, he didn't like to sell it and put pressure. But um, but there's a the. The business model is almost turning into paying a very low base wage with the potential to earn crazy money based on commission Interesting.
Speaker 1:So you know like you go on a service call if I'm on a commission base or if I'm getting paid. You know a lot of companies call it ticket pay or ticket time or whatever. You get paid for billable hours, not idle hours, but just billable hours, and then you earn a commission. So if I'm at your house and I'm not making any commission and I'm making a livable wage, okay, this is why it's broke. This is what we need to do to fix it. You agree to that? That may be one part, right? Well, if I'm on commission all of a sudden, right, Well, if I'm on commission all of a sudden, if you don't need a whole new system today to fix this, then you need four or five parts. So it encourages commission-based pay, really encourages overselling.
Speaker 2:Going down the line of overselling. What do you think are some key elements that a small business owner needs to keep in mind if they're trying to build trust in their community?
Speaker 1:just you know, treat people like you would your, your family. Yeah, I, I understand. Like as far as the heating and air conditioning business goes, I understand the urge to sell equipment. You know, because we are our margins on a system change out. You know, changing a complete system, that's probably where we're going to make the most money in one single day but, with that being said, that's not always what's appropriate. You know, generally when we change a system or when we come to a homeowner or a small business owner and say you need to replace this air conditioning system, it's done. I mean it's destined for the scrap heap. There's not. I mean there comes a point where either it's absolutely not repairable or it makes zero financial sense to continue putting money.
Speaker 2:Because the repairs are more than what you're going to pay to replace.
Speaker 1:Or when you have a repair that's going to cost half to two-thirds the cost of a new system, sure, and then you might have another major repair needed in the next year or something. That's when that conversation is justified. But, on a fairness to the customer standpoint and a business strategy, honestly, I'd rather repair your system for the next two, three, four, five years and then sell you a system once I've, you know, built trust within you, sure.
Speaker 2:It's cheaper to maintain a customer relationship. Yeah, it's cheaper.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's cheaper for you to make those repairs and a lot of times if it makes financial sense.
Speaker 1:I also retain you as a customer longer. Exactly, yeah, but you know there's a lot of companies out there that every time they're going for that sale, they're going for the big sale. Every time they go out, they're swinging for the fence. As far as building trust, just be honest, there's. I mean, is there times companies come out and have disagreed with a diagnosis or something we've made? Do I have employees that make a mistake from time to time? Sure, we're human, right, and when they do make a mistake, we own it. And, as a matter of fact, I don't think there's a business or a person out there that can tell you they don't make mistakes, that they're right 100% of the time. And I think honestly that the times we've made mistakes and we've owned it and we've presented a resolution, as opposed to that being a negative thing nine times out of 10, it results in a stronger customer experience because of you know, at that point they've seen us screw up, they've seen us, you know, provide a solution.
Speaker 1:But as far as building trust that was the original question I think you asked me Building trust as a small business with a customer is just be honest. You know, treat them like you. Would your treat the customer like you would your family, um, if you're, if you're a person taking care of a person, then you know the money and the sale will follow naturally. You don't have to pry, you know you don't have to pry, you know you don't have to pry a sale.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and again say be honest, because there's a lot of people that people can check. You know full second opinions and so forth in our business and unfortunately we, you know there's a lot of mystery in our business and there's not a lot of people that truly, if you understand how it works, you're probably not calling us so like so many other industries. You know good liars, good salesmen, you know. I mean maybe good is not the good thing, but just the minute you get caught with something it's not worth it. I mean that one sale you get because of something being untruthful, that's a kiss of death to the business. We just don't do it at all. So it's just honesty all the time, even if we're wrong.
Speaker 2:How do you, how do you hire and then train your team to keep that front of mind?
Speaker 1:We spend a lot of time in our interview process, um, trying to gauge people's soft skills and where they're at personality wise.
Speaker 1:Where we don't, we don't have any tests or any you know special tools or whatever, um.
Speaker 1:But I think, um, if you talk to some other people in our management structure, we hire more based upon how somebody's going to fit into our culture over technical ability, because you can teach them right, correct, I could hire.
Speaker 1:I could hire a plumber with 30 years of experience and they are a heat and air tech with 30 years of experience and they know what inside now and they might be just you, a secret weapon as far as you know the technology goes, or the technical ability, but they're probably going to be the worst employee that we have, just because of the time they've got in the industry, sure, and their experience, and it's real hard to make somebody like that fit into our culture, not to say it hasn't happened, it doesn't happen. I've got some people that have came to us with a lot of experience and they fit really well. But we try to bring people out of honestly. We try to bring people out of trade schools and start them as apprentices, train them in-house, you know, get them a license and we basically build our own service techs at this point.
Speaker 2:And give them a career path.
Speaker 1:Yes, and the biggest thing with hiring people is if I'm not going to let somebody, if I'm not going to take my house key out of my pocket and send them to my house without me there, if I'm not comfortable sending them to my grandmother's house without me there, I'm not going to hire them. Because the number of people that trust us to hey, I'm going to leave the back door unlocked, the garage door code is, you know, Sure. Previous employment, public safety, before heat and air, became a thing for me. It's alarming, you know, from that experience, to the way people treat us. It's honestly alarming, it's humbling, it's a, it's a huge responsibility.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And yeah. So I mean it's the trust. The trust has to be built. And once we get somebody with a journeyman's license and they're in a truck and we put apprentices with them, you know, we, we, we with a journeyman's license and they're in a truck and we put apprentices with them. You know, we, we do a good job. We've built a culture where we police ourselves pretty well. Sure, um, there's been a couple instances where I've had guys that you know are out running a truck you know fairly long-term employees that will hire an apprentice and they come to me one morning and go, oh, I got some concerns about this guy because of, um, you know, this circumstance or that circumstance, and we do it. So we, we police ourselves pretty well.
Speaker 2:Open communication.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely, yeah, absolutely, and and and again. I think a lot of that comes from you know the environment that we've created by not um, by not having a big commission based pay structure and and you know the family type environment and everybody knows each other and we were fortunate in the fact that most of our guys are actual friends outside of work as well, so a lot of them do things together away from work on the weekends and the evenings and so forth. But that's the big thing is making sure someone fits the culture, because if they don't fit the culture, it's not going to work.
Speaker 2:What do you do about educating customers we talked a little bit about. You know, if you've got a customer that knows it all, they're probably not calling you. But for those repeat customers that are coming back to you often, what does that look like? Probably not calling you, but for those repeat customers are coming back to you often.
Speaker 1:What does that look like? You know there's, there's a, there's a lot of, there's a lot of schools and seminars and so forth you can pay money to go to to learn how to sell things Right. I mean, I'm sure you've heard of them. I find the best, I find the best sales tools actually education. And when we sit down you know myself or, um, one of the guys we sit down with the homeowner and it's either repairs or we're talking. We're having that uncomfortable conversation about you need to replace the system. Uh, it's about it. It's about it. A lot of times it's an hour and a half or two hour conversation about what exactly is broke, conversation about what exactly is broke, what it does and what the benefits of replacement are, what the benefits of repair may be, what the drawbacks of that repair may be, and it really varies. But basically it's just a 100% open conversation. You know Q&A, both directions about finding the fit for that one. You know for that one circumstance with that one customer.
Speaker 2:It goes back to that trust factor. Sure, I want to trust you If you're, if I know you're being upfront with me and telling me and helping me understand. I mean, I'm not an HVAC expert. You could tell me anything and I I probably believe it because I I mean I that's, I'm not.
Speaker 1:I'm not encouraging that, but it's true. That's what's dangerous about this industry. Yeah, there's a lot of mystery and nobody wants to be cold, Nobody wants to be hot.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And there's a danger element to what we do also.
Speaker 2:You know I mean the dangers of carbon monoxide, fire and electricity.
Speaker 1:they're all very real. You have a lot of responsibility to your clients. It's a very it's a very easy thing to do for me to go in there and be like, okay, this is going to kill your family, You've got to replace it now. If you say, yes, we can do it tomorrow. If you don't tell me and we don't do it tomorrow, I don't know when you're going to get you on the schedule and you guys are going to be living under blankets in the living room. We don't use those tactics at all.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:It's one of those things where, when we get to that point where we have a conversation, either, if we're not having a customer education conversation, it's a very, very small repair. I got you Anything above that, even if it's just with the service tech. If it's not me or Stephan, who's my right-hand guy director of Opera, I guess now we call him the director of business development. But anyway, we try to go out and handle the big conversations, everything from the simplest repair that can get you by right now. You know all the way up to replacement, with all the options in between, different efficiencies, different.
Speaker 1:You know styles, fuel choices, heat pump versus gas. You know pretty much every scenario that's applicable to the situation. And while we may say, you know, if this is my house, this is what I would do, or this is what I would tell my mom or my dad to do, ultimately the customer's driving the bus right, so they're going to make the decision. So we put everything out there on the table, go over the pros and cons and we walk away happy if the customer's happy.
Speaker 2:I love that you just launched a septic arm of your business, correct.
Speaker 1:Let's hear about it. So I didn't necessarily want to be in the plumbing business after I started this myself, so we resisted that for a while. And then the plumbing calls and the plumbing demand was such that we've done plumbing for several years Through plumbing calls.
Speaker 1:However, we kept running into rural customers that would call for a plumbing issue. And we get there and it's not really a plumbing issue, it's a septic issue. So we were referring them to some people in the area and once again I see a customer service hole as well as an opportunity. A lot of the people we were referring people to don't answer the phone, don't return voicemails or again we're back to where we'll put you on the list. It may take us three or four weeks to get there, but we'll put you on the list.
Speaker 2:But what do you do in the meantime, in those three or four weeks?
Speaker 1:If your septic tank's completely full and you can't flush a toilet in your house, it's kind of hard to wait, yeah, three or four weeks. So then people are, you know they're, they're calling, and you know we had customers paying huge trip fees and so forth from uh septic companies to drive a hundred miles with the vacuum truck to come, you know, clean their tank out. Wow, um, and so we saw this opportunity. So we, we started putting one foot in front of the other and thinking about it about a year ago, year and a half ago, and then it kind of it came into existence, you know, through uh again some other opportunities and necessities that presented themselves at the end of the year last year and we had a dump truck, you know, set up and fabricated, and we had our septic truck vacuum truck that you suck the septic tank out with, you know, fabricated, and we really hoped to be up and going, you know, in the middle of late February, the first part of March and things like everything else in the supply chain.
Speaker 1:Everything kind of went slower than we wanted it to, had a couple little bumps in the road, but we kept it real quiet. We actually have installed a couple complete septic systems. But we didn't really put anything public until we were ready to go 100%, and I think that was the first week of April when that happened, when we first started. We launched Facebook page and started pushing some stuff out. We've had some billboards go up, we've been getting a lot of calls. I mean, it's been a hit so far.
Speaker 2:Good Congratulations. Well, thank you. What other services? I think we briefly talked about it, maybe in the beginning, but I don't think we really talked about everything that Van Dyke does.
Speaker 1:So we do heating and air conditioning. Primarily, our areas that we like to stay in is residential and light commercial, and by light commercial I mean no boilers, no chillers. Okay, you know. So you know a little office building, strip malls, you know that sort of thing. What's your service?
Speaker 2:Residential, residential residential stuff, and what were you going to ask me? Your service area?
Speaker 1:So we work pretty much everywhere between Edmond and Lawton. Okay, we, we've, we started in Chickasha. Our main office and our all our administrative staff and so forth is in Chickasha. We have opened an Oklahoma City office off of it's, just south of the Northwest Expressway, northwest 89th and Council area, and, I apologize, I don't know the address. I can drive there but I can't tell you the address. Sure, I can drive there, but I can't tell you the address. Sure, the, but you know so that heat and air and then you know full service plumbing.
Speaker 1:We don't do a whole lot of new construction. We will do some, you know, custom home builds and some smaller commercial stuff. But we try to be the, we try to be the savior when people have a problem is what we try to focus on? Yeah, service and repair and retrofit replacement. We had those two the heat and air and the plumbing. Then we started the septic to run alongside the plumbing. With septic comes some other ancillary things too. We've got the equipment. Our employees on that side have a fair amount of experience with dirt work and so forth. So while we're not out being a dirt work contractor, we are doing some smaller stuff, like if somebody needs a dump truck load of, you know, sand for the sandbox, or you know, dirt for a garden project or gravel for a driveway, that sort of thing. You know we're hauling aggregate, you know rocks and gravel.
Speaker 1:We're doing some driveway work, you know, kind of alongside that, but not trying to get in a complete separate thing there. We just try to keep the, we try to keep the dump truck and that driver busy when we don't have a septic install.
Speaker 2:Sure. So for anybody who's listening or watching today, where can they connect with you? Learn more about Van Dyke Mechanical.
Speaker 1:So you can find us at VanDykeMechanicalcom, which is V-A-N-D-Y-E-C-K.
Speaker 2:We'll pop it up on the screen.
Speaker 1:Unlike Dick Van Dyke, the actor. Everybody knows it's spelled a little bit different. Okay, or you can call us at 405-224-2665. And I'll go ahead. It's on all my business cards. That's another difference between us. You know like all of our management staff can interact with us. Our cell phones are on our business cards.
Speaker 2:You can get a hold of somebody. Oh, absolutely.
Speaker 1:If the office frustrates, you call me on my cell phone. But my cell phone I'm going to put it out there as well as 405-222-6275. But happy to talk to people. If I can help anybody you know in any way, shape or form, I'd be happy to have a conversation.
Speaker 2:I love that. Thank you so much for being here today, Well thank you for sharing all the things with our listeners. For anybody listening today, I'm going to put all of that information linked below down in the description box. 'll also put the address to your oklahoma city office and she yeah, I'll link all of that below. If you've got any questions for clark, um, you can email, I'll put do you have an email?
Speaker 1:yeah, uh, it's just c van dyke. You have an email.
Speaker 2:I emailed mechanicalcom I'll link that below too. Um, thank you so much for listening today. We will look forward to you, for your, for our next episode. In the meantime, thanks for listening and thank you for being here today thank you for having me have a good one. Bye, friends, bye.